ADDED 6/4: New studies show that hydroxychloroquine has no value either as a treatment or a preventive for COVID-19.

UPDATED 6/3: From the “No shit, Sherlock” department: Sweden finally admits it screwed up. “The architect of Sweden’s controversial lighter lockdown policy for dealing with coronavirus has for the first time conceded the Scandinavian country should have imposed more restrictions.”

ADDED 5/30: Vietnam pulled off the ultimate miracle. They had 97 million people, a long border with China, daily flights from Wuhan … and a COVID-19 death total of ZERO! Not one death. Not even one elderly person. How did they do it? All of my guesses were wrong. I figured it was being bathed in the blood of Jesus, having the localities bid against each other for PPEs, downplaying the virus as an alarmist hoax, shilling for unproven drug cures, investigating bleach cocktails, telling the regional governors to open their areas back up without meeting the criteria set by the health ministry, having the highest national officials refuse to wear masks, and holding large rallies as late as March. Damn, I was SO close! It turns out the true solution was for their prime minister to place his idiot son-in-law in charge of co-ordinating the medical supply chain. That would have been my next guess!

“Our projections suggest warmer temperature, more humidity, and moderate outdoor UV exposure may offer a modest reduction in reproductive number; however, upcoming changes in weather alone will NOT be enough to fully contain the transmission of COVID-19.”

ADDED 5/20: The big question comes up again – Can people be reinfected by COVID-19? Thirteen sailors on the Teddy Roosevelt, all considered to have recovered and all having tested negative at least twice, have exhibited symptoms again after returning to duty, and have tested positive. “Whether the afflicted sailors were reinfected or still had the virus after multiple negative tests remains under investigation.”

ADDED 4/29: New evidence reveals: “Coronavirus infections greatly outnumber confirmed covid-19 cases, potentially by a factor of 10 or more.” My guess it that it’s somewhere between 3-to-1 and 6-to-1. The USA has a ratio of about 18 cases per death. The proper ratio, based upon South Korea and other countries, is probably between 50 and 100 cases per death, indicating a fatality rate between 1% and 2%. That’s a wide range because the calculation is an oversimplification on my part. There are many factors going into the fatality rate, and it’s not necessarily fair to compare areas, but my guess is probably in the right ballpark.

NEW 3/28: The data reveal that covid-19 is much more dangerous for men. The data are consistent from country to country: men make up 72% of the intensive care unit admissions in Spain, 73% in France, 75% in Norway, 71% in the UK. While researchers cannot yet determine how much of the gender disparity can be attributed to behavioral components, it seems clear that the significance of the gap across cultures means that there must be some biological explanation.

March 9:

The Fake News Media and their partner, the Democrat Party, is doing everything within its semi-considerable power (it used to be greater!) to inflame the CoronaVirus situation, far beyond what the facts would warrant. Surgeon General, “The risk is low to the average American.”

The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. We are in contact with everyone and all relevant countries. CDC & World Health have been working hard and very smart. Stock Market starting to look very good to me!

China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!

60 thoughts on “COVID-19 update”

Regarding GOP Governor’s polls:
Most of the top GOP governors lead blue states. Its almost like if your job is potentially on the line its probably a good idea to be competent. DeWine is the only outlier here. He cheated to get into office but like Kasich he seems to understand that doing your job properly is best way to keep your job.

Most of the rest are various shades of evil or stupid but are in little danger of losing their offices.

DeSantis is at 58%…. He is firing everybody who is questioning the data.
Reynolds was so competent at her job, she ended up in quarantine, and is still at 60%.
I guess you have be burying your citizens in mass graves before your approval rating dips below 50%….

Glad to see nearly another half trillion dollars of wealth dropped on the same 200 or so people who already own half the world’s worth of it.

Meanwhile you have fucktards like Lindsay Graham and Mitch McConnell bitching about $600 to live being too much incentive for people barely making ends meet from going back to wage slavery.

Feel free to explain what contributions to the human race have Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg made in the past month to ‘earn’ that wealth. Oh I forgot, they’ve contributed so much already to society with getting a shitty trinket mailed a few days faster and cheaper than otherwise, and an overglorified bulletin board with pictures and bullshit.

Here, obviously you guys deserve to live like gods, because of rugged individualism and all that. Here’s some more money.

Such is the world as it has come to be, Indy. Money is the measure of all things (I had somehere – Steve, perhaps? agree with exactly that statement) and billionaire and their corporations buy our politicians, who then consider it their highest duty to carry out their requests. “Beau of the Fifth Column” just did a very good video about how Mitch McConnell’s corporate campaign contributions line up exactly with his political positions.

We predict that increased mobility following relaxation of social distancing will lead to resurgence of transmission, keeping all else constant. We predict that deaths over the next two-month period could exceed current cumulative deaths by greater than two-fold, if the relationship between mobility and transmission remains unchanged. Our results suggest that factors modulating transmission such as rapid testing, contact tracing and behavioural precautions are crucial to offset the rise of transmission associated with loosening of social distancing.

Overall, we show that while all US states have substantially reduced their reproduction numbers, we find no evidence that any state is approaching herd immunity or that its epidemic is close to over.

UncleScoopy says: “I thought it was dishonest for Trump to be shilling for the drug [hydroxychloroquin] when it seemed to have no benefit, but now that I know it actually kills people, he absolutely should tell his followers to use it. He should especially push this message in the purple states! If you really trust Trump, take mass quantities of this drug, the more the merrier!”

I know it is wrong to feel this way, but I do too. At least I hope Trump guzzles it.

It’s not that complicated. If you take the drug for malaria (for example), you are less likely to die than if you do not take it. If you take the drug for coronavirus, you are more likely to die than if you don’t. In both cases there is approximately an equal chance the drug will harm you (I suppose), but in the case of malaria the positive effects are greater than the potential negatives. In the case of corona, absent any positive effects, there is only the chance of harm.

It is also possible that the drug interacts with the virus in a way that is dangerous, so that it produces additional side effects not seen when it is used to treat malaria, but that would be pure speculation on my part. There is no scientific evidence to support that.

Needless to say, if you are completely healthy, there is only harm because there is no possible benefit. The drug is not a vaccine. Nobody has ever claimed at any time that taking it will help to prevent the virus, and there is not even any suggestion similar to that.

But if you don’t believe the evidence, please take as much HCQ as you can. Grind it up and sprinkle it on your eggs instead of pepper!

This “study” is BS, seems to me. I only skimmed but I gather they studied a grand total of 1 subject who tested positive but had been asymptomatic. Contract trading some 500 exposures, no one else got sick. But many were wearing masks. So a possible conclusion is simply that social distancing is effective. Kind of like fatality rate (CFR) being a function of care. We try to “flatten the curve” specifically to suppress CFR due to care saturation. What did the silent spread look like when we all believed only the sick were contagious and due to shortage of masks (for medical workers) essentially everyone was going around without a mask? Well, we can’t really answer that.

The point is science makes nuthin-burger claims when it’s bad science. Media collude w sci hype cuz clickbait. Liars weasel cuz respectable coverage detects qualifiers as inoculating while receptive ears take at “face value”. No lose. Point of pointing out nuthin-burgers is so at least we few non-idiots acknowledge what’s goin on. I called BS cuz that’s what’s goin on here.

“Science” isn’t claiming anything here. I clicked expecting to see another example of how reporters are only good at doing two stories: This Is A Universal Cure, or This Is A Deadly Poison. Any detail more complex than that is omitted, and in an internet age where it would be dead easy to link to the underlying paper, they can’t be bothered to.
The cnn article isn’t even that. It doesn’t report science – there was no hypothesis, no experimentation, no analysis. It’s closer in spirit to a couple of accountants pissing on each other. Call it a steaming pile if you want (& I will agree with you), but don’t file it in the Science drawer.

OK, fair enough. I was meaning the cnn article linked a few jumps up in the comments.
Reading the paper, this is a retrospective study of everyone who contacted *one* asymptomatic carrier. Of course you can’t draw broad conclusions from that. That’s why all the weaseling – they’re basically saying “Don’t read too much into it (especially don’t start acting like everything’s cool now), but here’s some data”.
In normal times, this wouldn’t be a story, but here we are.

China is a totalitarian dictatorship. I give their ‘studies’ as much credence as the homeopathy and essential oil nutjobs.

On a positive note, Twitter has finally stepped in and started to tag Trump’s bullshit lies with factual information. I hope he goes insane, him and his supporters both, over this finally happening.

You’ll hear the usual bullshit free speech shit, as if the world and everyone else’s dime is their own personal platform to yap a bunch of schizophrenic nonsense to everyone they can. Hope they get all locked down and their bullshit is off major platforms forever.

And tell Billy Bob from Bumfuck, Alabama with the gun and Trump flag that once he’s done cooking meth and fucking his sister to go get his GED and learn how to put together his own server and platform if any of them have a problem with it.

While I don’t entirely disagree with every sentiment you express, it does seem to me you’re hyperventilating. Yes, China has trouble with credibility, openness & seriousness. OTOH, they did marshall an enormous epidemic response after initial kneejerk attempts to hide the news. Wish we could claim as much. Meanwhile, in quite a few fields of science the whole world & the US at the top of the list is suffering a loss of traction by the mainstream. (Read: inability to reach meaningful conclusions.) To which the fringes respond by coopting our increasingly lame pop sci sources to attack that mainstream that they feel victimized by. Because to the incompetent, being asked to breathe fresh air reeks of control.

What looks like a loss of traction may be just you (& me & everybody) wishing that the underlying physical reality was simpler. You get it, then you’re not immune? That’s a new one to me, it feels unfair.
On top of that, you’ve got President Scheisskopf playing 3-card monte with the N95s and pretending that he’s doing something by naming the project Operation Speedy Speedy GoFast and all the unnecessary resulting deaths.
Still, there are vaccines in the works. All is not lost, all is only misplaced.

You’ve built a premise on a broken foundation though. You can’t say their response has been great, because as you said, have have trouble with credibility and openness.

Sure they can present and SAY what their response is, but when they manipulate numbers to present it that way so that companies like Apple feel comfortable opening up Foxconn again – there is very obviously an ulterior motive.

They’re Big Brother of 1984. They’ve still went so far as jailing and ‘reprogramming’ journalists who’ve tried to talk about the response. They’re pushing hard for the annexation of Hong Kong’s autonomy, as well as manipulating government in Taiwan to push representatives that are ‘pro unification.’

I don’t consider anything they do or say to be valid, unless it comes from an outside source or free media contacts inside the country who avoid the police.

Just a comment on the Swedish numbers on the worldometers site. Just look at the linear graphs on both total cases and total deaths. That’s some scary stuff, it just keeps on going without levelling out. And next to it (geographically), looking at the same stats, Norway hasn’t had a death since May 21 (as of the 27th). It shows two completely different ways of dealing with the same thing.

If I can make one suggestion: given the questionable weekend death count figures,and that, it seems these deaths are reported sometime over the week, it might also be useful to report the weekly death count (from Monday to Sunday, I guess) and not just the daily death count.

Five states on Friday eclipsed their previous records for new covid-19 cases. Mississippi, Utah, Wisconsin, South Carolina and Arizona all set new highs in the daily reporting of new positive cases of the virus.

The California numbers are especially alarming in a state that had once started to turn the curve downward. They reported 3,600 new cases on Friday, by far their highest ever. Texas also set an all-time high Friday, a feat accomplished by Florida the previous day.

California is the most populous state followed by Texas and then Florida…so it’s not surprising that they are at the top in cases. That’s what you would expect after loosening of social distancing rules. People are being sacrificed for the economy.

Funny how you put Trump as “war” when he’s the only US President the last 3+ decades that hasn’t started one. Obama, the politician that liberals love to present as “the bestest president ever!” started 2 wars for example and destroyed one of the very few countries in Africa that provided for its citizens with universal health care, free higher education, even public housing. Now they have a slave trade and all its gold was stolen by the US.

Just wanted to point it out because liberal hypocrisy is so funny to me, partly because of the constant grandstanding. Oh btw, in the last crisis American billionaires got even richer than that, partly because *someone* protected the bankers who caused the crisis and left the working class to rot.

I would certainly hold not Obama up as the example of an ideal President. His mistakes were pretty large ones. His responses in Syria and Ukraine were two of America’s biggest foreign policy blunders in recent years.

He didn’t fail as miserably as his predecessor, but he also had more than a fair share of blunders.

You’re talking about the benevolent Gaddhafi?!!??
Muhammar was a dead man walking after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It did take a hell of a lot longer to expunge him than I thought it would. Probably the only thing that propped him was the support of the Italians.

I just don’t understand the American Trump Derangement Syndrome as your conservatives accurately coined it, at least he’s not a war criminal like all of his predecessors. He’s loud and obnoxious like all rightwing populists but the only reason I find, other than optics for such overreactions is that he’s ruining the plans of a neoliberal/neocon establishment that had other plans for this world.

As bad as Trump’s world is I prefer it over a continuation of the neoliberal/neocon hegemony of constant wars, dystopian worldwide trade agreements, and the slow whitewashing of corporatism through identity politics grandstanding and distractions. I know it’s offtopic but OMG there’s so much hypocrisy in all this and I just don’t understand how American liberals don’t see all this and just focus on the least dangerous pawn in all this.

You are not an American, JohnK? You say you don’t understand the AMERICAN Trump Derangement Syndrome, as if you aren’t from here?

Also, I take it you are not a neocon or a neoliberal, which you lump together, which I think would startle anyone who identifies as either (does anyone, or are neocons and neoliberals the kind of thing everyone says they aren’t?) Anyway, then, what are you, so that we might know the right course to follow? Conservative, liberal, or something altogether different?

I find you unusual, JohnK, because you are OK with Trump, but are willing to call George Bush the Younger (and heck, maybe the Elder too) a war criminal. This is new and different in my experience.

You should have left it off at “I don’t understand”.
American “conservatism” has largely become part of the Trump cult. These people are “conservative” only in the sense that they are not liberal. National Review is a good example. In 2016 they put out an issue filled with nothing but articles on why Trump should not be nominated let alone elected. Now they’re basically part of the “But the Judges” wing of the cult.
Nobody loathes Trump more than the relatively few remaining real conservatives.
Or as Baseball Bob once put it, “Don’t criticize what you can’t understand.”

It’s the 76th anniversary of D-Day and we’ve gone from a President who sent the Screaming Eagles to Little Rock to one who is lusting to turn the Airborne loose on demonstrators. From Ike to Trump. A party can’t go to hell any more than that.

You said absolutely nothing to address my points. The remaining “real” conservatives within the Republican party are neocon psychopaths that seem to be getting along fine with the DNC now. Once they lost power and there was no need for the false dilemma anymore the veil fell and both corporate media and Democrats like Obama starting showing their preference for actual war criminals like Bush, Bolton and their ilk.

This exemplifies the dangerous hypocrisy of the liberal consensus shaped by corporate media and spoonfed to social media “activists”. Everything is about optics not actions, even obvious exaggeration like Trump letting “Airborne loose on demonstrators” become part of the narrative.

It should be noted that the entire situation with the American riots has little to do with Trump, if Obama a black president didn’t do shit about police violence which btw is the real problem here, not racism, why the fuck would you expect fucking Trump to do something about it?

Your “points” are incoherent fantastical drivel.
As far as the Airborne thing you seem to be completely ignorant of Trump’s and Hearing Problem Cotton’s fulminations (both recorded/documented) on that topic during the last week.

Yes, the FACT that Bush, a fucking war criminal, hangs out with the Obamas, his buddies, and who corporate media are slowly whitewashing for example is such a drivel. Also the Airborne thing is a ridiculous exaggeration like I said, they were just backups for the National Guard and only a couple of hundred. Compare that with your claim that Trump wanted to let “the Airborne loose on protestors”.

But Trump does want to do that (unleash the regular Army on protestors). He just hasn’t nerved up to do it yet. And what different does it make if it’s only a few hundred? What he, has to commit a million at once for it to count?

You seem to be very angry and also to have an unusual take on things, JohnK. Where can we learn more of what you think, and why you think it?

Well, I agree with you, Tanner, but technically, Bush the Younger was in charge. He should have been both impeached and tried as a war criminal on the basis of the faked up documentation “justifiying” war in Iraq. Didn’t happen, of course. There wasn’t even much call for it. That was part of the road leading to Trump.

How dumb do you have to be to think that a Russian shill would care to manipulate this site? I like how you people still believe in the Russian boogeyman even after most of your claims were proven wrong, shows how strong the propaganda is. I bet many of you still don’t know that the Steele Dossier was a fake.

The Steele Dossier was opposition research by Democrats based on rumors of low level sources that actually denied ever giving such information.

Not only it’s a lie but it was an easily disputed one that the FBI and CIA used as an excuse to get unlawful FISA warrants. Of course such an obvious abuse of power was deliberately ignored by most American corporate media because they have the same bosses the American deep state does.

The Steele dossier was originally commissioned by anti-Trump Republicans. Provenance aside, nothing in it has been proven false. The FISA court is a rubber stamp; that is regrettable. But the warrants to follow possible anti-American activity by Carter Page were perfectly legal. This only became a big deal because Page worked for Trump.

JohnK said (about the Steele Dossier): “Not only it’s a lie but it was an easily disputed one that the FBI and CIA used as an excuse to get unlawful FISA warrants.”

The CIA and FBI used something that was easily “disputed” (?) to get FISA warrants? JohnK, as your rage rises, you are beginning to make less sense. That happens to me too. You will be more persuasive if you calm down. Think about how small the stakes in this forum are, as you point out yourself.

Maybe because we’ve seen it before. And the Gaddhafi/neocon natterings are quite typical of a bot. I’ve had run-ins with enough of them to know that from experience.
Btw, if I’m you, I’m not calling anybody dumb. Pot and kettle.

I’m sure your paranoid mind “saw it before” with other people that were also disagreeing with you. Also the absolute audacity of you defending the invasion in Libya and the subsequent disaster that ruined the lives of millions of people does not go unnoticed. Go accuse a Libyan of nattering about it you self-centered first-world asshole. Shame on you.